40. Ancient Medicine & the Love of the Ancestors - Atava Garcia Swiecicki

We each carry our own unique ancestral medicine, and can (and should!) spend a lifetime uncovering it. A teacher of herbal, folk, and indigenous medicine, Atava is deeply grounded in and a powerful guide through this sacred work.

IN THE INTRO:

  • Synchronicity, mushroom medicine, and the deer dress

  • Herbal Medicine Giveaway

  • Ancestral Apothecary's Student of Color Scholarship Fund- investing in herbal education is investing in the health of your community

  • The Ancestor Song

IN THE INTERVIEW:

  • Invocation

  • When an ancestor becomes an ally from the other side

  • How to know when it's really a message from spirit and not just our own projection

  • Food as the one surviving cultural tradition within a family

  • Remembering your indigenous mind

  • How giving time and attention to our roots can heal relationships among the living

  • Ancestral connection and reverence work never ends

  • Healing is in our bones, our blood, our DNA

  • Being witnessed in our stories

  • Remembering that the plants are (literally) our ancestors

  • Using plants to ground deeply when talking about and facing ancestral issues like colonization and slavery- we're never alone as long as we have our plant allies

  • Making space for people of color to explore and reclaim their ancestral medicine 

  • Teaching healing skills so that people can treat those within their own communities and not need saving from elsewhere

  • Herbalists are the grassroots community healers

  • You're going to be a better herbalist and healer if you're rooted in your own ancestral traditions

  • We all come from people who work with plants

  • Love is the basic fundamental vibration that keeps the universe moving- how love and community saw Atava through uterine cancer & remembering to reweave the energy of love back into the healing arts

  • A beautiful death: how the love we give and receive in this life carries us into the realm of the ancestors

LINKS:

Get the PDF transcript of this episode here.

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Photo of me wearing Atava’s dress on the land of Mariee Sioux’s family in 2009 (so young!)

Photo of me wearing Atava’s dress on the land of Mariee Sioux’s family in 2009 (so young!)